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My Advice to the Alt-Right

Back in the 1980’s, when I was a young man, being a young conservative was the best of times because it felt like the war had turned. The enemy’s lines had broken and we were on our way to a great final victory over the forces of darkness. Every right-wing hack in America had a laundry list of things that had to be done, once the battle was over and our tropaion was placed on the battlefield. First the military would be rebuilt, then we would win the Cold War and then we would roll back the welfare state. Party time.

Young people can be forgiven for getting ahead of themselves, but there were plenty of old coots talking about the triumph of conservatism in the 80’s. Even though Reagan did nothing to tame the welfare state or even slow its growth, it felt like we were still on the right side of history. Once the Soviets cracked, it just seemed like a matter of when, not if, the great return to normalcy would happen. Of course, that did not happen. The Left regrouped and the Right sold all of us out for cushy jobs in Washington.

That’s the first bit of advice I offer to the alt-right. Trust no one. In the Reagan Revolution, it was impossible to tell the grifters from the committed. Lots of people attached themselves to conservatism, as writers, thinkers and commentators, simply because there was money in it. The term “Conservative Inc.” did not exist in the 80’s, but the idea of it sure did. Just ask Charles Krauthammer. He was a liberal speech writer for Walter Mondale and then he changed teams, because there was more money in being a right-winger.

Related to this is the recent Milo flap, where he was cut down by previous statements he made in one of his “look at me I’m outrageous” performances. He was ever so close to finally getting onto the big stage, making it to the show, but now he has been sent down to the minors and his career is in doubt. The people in charge of the stage have strict rules about who gets on and what they say while on the stage. You either submit to these rules or they toss you from the stage.

Conservatives in the 80’s made this blunder. They truly thought they would be accepted into the club if the public embraced them. The people in charge don’t give a damn about the public’s opinion. They care about controlling the message and the media stage is the platform from which the message is broadcast. If you want onto the stage, it means signing a blood oath to promote the message and there is no room for compromise. There are two sides in this, pick one and live with the choice.

That’s why it is important to no-platform the people in charge. It would glorious if all Trump voters dropped their cable sub this month, but that’s not happening. People like their entertainments. What you can do is build your own media platforms by relentlessly supporting the new ones coming on-line now. Gab is becoming a useful platform that is beyond the control of the Cloud People. Vox Day is starting a news service designed to curate news stories in a way that undermines the media model. .

Supporting the media that supports you means looking for a friendly source before going to the mainstream source. It also means the leaders and big shots of the movement need to stay the hell off the mainstream platforms. Milo doing Maher did everything for Maher and nothing for Milo. Anyone who tries to get onto the big stage and mix it up with the mainstream media should be suspect. It is the Golden Rule, the man with the gold makes the rules and in media, it is the man who owns the stage who makes the rules.

The big lesson from the Reagan Revolution is that optimism is easily used as a weapon against the optimistic. All the “Morning in America” bullshit in the 80’s fooled a lot of people into thinking the fight was over and the results were a foregone conclusion. Young people were convinced they had been born into the springtime of a cultural revolution, when in fact they had been born into the early winter of a declining civilization. Instead of being clear eyed about what was possible, people got caught up in the excitement of the times.

It will never be morning in America. The alt-right will never amount to anything unless it maintains a clear eyed view of its own position. It was a failure to grasp the reality of our age that allowed a legion of hustlers to rush in and turn the conservative movement into Conservative Inc. We live in an age where charlatans take advantage of fools, while pedants lecture the critics on matters of style. There’s no sweeping this away in order to start fresh. The question of the modern age is how will the story end.

Finally, the key to lasting success for any mass movement is to take over the institutions that can be re-purposed and destroy those that cannot. The institutions of society are the high ground of every civilization. The Left co-opted the schools, government, media and finance. They obliterated religion, local institutions and, to a great degree, the family. The grand success of this weird religion offers a lesson for the alt-right. It’s not enough to fight and build alternative institutions. You have to begin to infiltrate the exiting ones.

The Masons, for example, are constantly advertising for members. That’s the sort of opportunity a young a vibrant Left would have infiltrated and re-purposed. The point is to organize a million Jacobin societies by taking over what has been abandoned and infiltrating what is not well guarded. The demolition of twitter is a great example of how to destroy an organization by turning its rules into a weapon. Twitter is now now the dying brand of vinegar drinking prudes. That’s the lesson. If you cannot own it, destroy it.

Yep. I graduated college in 1988. The future was so bright I had to wear shades. Reagan was triumphant and was going to hand off the work to the next generation of conservatives. HW Bush was suspect but how bad could he screw it up? I often wonder how different things would have been if Reagan had not compromised with the establishment by picking Bush. DuPont (who I supported in ’88) might have done things differently. Instead we got 2 generations of big government “conservatives” and the purposeful dismantling of Reagan’s reforms by the people who promised to continue them.… Read more »

My theory is that Buckley Conservatism was always a Progressive heresy. In the end, it so easily untethered itself from the conservatism of Russell Kirk because it was never really attached to it. A lot of the language in Reagan speeches was out of the old Yankee tradition. The city upon a hill stuff being the most obvious example. The reason “conservatives” find it so easy to lock shields with the Left these days is they believe all the same stuff. They always did. The debate was over how to impose it.

In those days I supported Gingrich, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and Buchanan, and later Phil Gramm.
I spotted Bennett as a sanctimonious windbag from the beginning, and quickly learned that Jack Kemp was far, far, too proud of having showered with Black guys.

Canadian, but entered university in 1988 and Reagan’s America certainly rubbed off on me too. That version of me wasn’t exactly ready for reaction, but more than that an optimistic version of conservatism appealed to me and seemed actually possible. I wasn’t unaware of Buchanan, Francis, or others in the more paleo tradition, still less opposed, but I was less drawn to them and the movement wasn’t as fractured anyway. And I was young. There was even a bit of libertarian, free trader and globalizer in me. Hah! Constitutional government and the free market were going to spread around the… Read more »

Bill Maher of all people, had a sage advice for Milo ( paraphrasing) – “Dude, slow down, your career hasn’t even started yet”. Milo, while fighting right battle wanted to out-outrage everyone. I hope he survives it and learns from it.

I think Milo can turn this into gold. Kids, his target for anti-PC agiprop love folks that get banned. Milo’s street cred will be armored by this… as long as he doesn’t grovel. So far so good. The Berkley protest and now this… Milo is blessed by his adversaries. We’ll see how this unfolds. * plus, new chapter for his book.

I don’t think Milo survives this one. I saw and heard the video he made in question (3X) and it was right out of the NAMBLA playbook. Creepy and twisted as shit. It’s on YouTube as we speak. Go and see it for yourselves. He *actually* defends man-boy sex and then has the gall to point to a Catholic priest who kicked him off on his lifestyle as offering him “protection” and “guidance”. His “retraction” is no more than a cover-your-ass non-denial-denial. Homosexuals have always lusted after boys to groom and sodomize. I know first hand. I grew up just… Read more »

If you think this is about what Milo said, you need to wake up and smell the coffee. They destroyed him because of his success not for some particular words. And they’ll do the same to the next one regardless.

I’m not saying that Milo is a hill to die on. I’m saying that it’s time the Right quit playing by a different set of rules. Nobody is saying you have to defend a specific comment. But we should never, ever, ever throw someone on the right under the bus. Ever.

Are you aware that Milo was raped and abused as a young child? He has never supported pedophilia in any shape. What he did do is trying to associate and connect his personal experience as a boy with that of other pedophiles who choose to violate young boys as he was. His speech was more an adamant exposure about what results being raped by an older male via his experience. Z Man posted a great opinion while explaining the to actions of many that demand you go with the flow or you are out. Simply put – Milo became a… Read more »

I think Milo was talking about the very thing that most all wise,old straights know: that homosexuality only survives by predatory older gays taking advantage of confused young guys and “recruiting them to the team.” That’s probably why a lot of wise old straights aren’t too keen on homosexuality. As Z points out, that’s why every prog celebrates LGBT, but none of them want their kids to be one.

I once read an Egyptian proverb from the 1300s: Don’t let your son join the Sufi’s. They’ll be lining up to bugger him. The diversity crowd also seems to be ignorant that the “poet of love,” Rumi, is declaiming of man-boy love.

Milo ain’t even started. The guy is fully vested in his crusade. That’s a guy on a mission. Tell you guys what, Ol’ Milo knows they murdered Andrew, Andrew knew what was going down with Pizzagate and Podesta. I’ll stake anything on that. When they killed Andrew Brietbart, they made him stronger than he ever was alive. Look at project Veritis, Steve Bannon, Milo. These guys can not be denied. The roots of Alt-Right. Bannon works for Donald Trump for a reason. Trump was successful not only because dirt people believed in him, Andrew’s legacy was instrumental. Nothing is unrelated… Read more »

Clinton played the sax on Arsinio Hall wearing Ray Bans…. it was all downhill from there. The pop-culture President. I knew we were on thin ice in Reagan’s second term as the Donks were high on Borking Bork and trying to make Iran-Contra the second Watergate. Things did look good during Reagan’s first term, but the signs were there that most of DC was playing along and waiting their time to get back to being jerks. The good news for now, vs then? The curtain has dropped and the ugly opposition has been laid bare. Trump was paying attention in… Read more »

Infiltration, subversion, owning and eventual destruction was exactly what was done to the Catholic Church and it was done very effectively. The same could be said of US conservatism, beginning well before Reagan. The problem here lies in the fact that those of the Left are fanatical and generally live unsatisfactory daily lives, while the conservative has little interest in dedicating himself to a daily life of intrigue and constant anger against an abstract enemy; only when pushed beyond reasonable and directly visible limits does he respond. That push, however, has begun to be felt, but it would appear not… Read more »

The problem again is the double standard. If a Deplorable deems to stand up for their rights and pushes back, then the system that tolerates all kinds of malfeasance on the part of the Left, will swoop down on the Deplorable and punish them with unremitting harshness be it jail, fines, loss of job, divorce, loss of children. monies confiscated, etc., all in the name of the State protecting the rights of others. Just look at the mountain made out of Gen. Flynn when Hillary had mountains of verified treasonous actions pollluting her environs and not only didn’t she go… Read more »

There are plenty of clubs and orgs dying on the vine out there ripe for the picking. Lions, Rotary, Elks,… the list goes on and on. The average age of some of the mainline churches is so high, you could probably choose one or two and turn it in a couple of years.

I’m 29 years old and have never know a single person who was in a Rotary or Elks club. All I know about that kind of stuff is from watching The Flintstones because they would go to a Moose club or something, I’m sure it was very common in the 60’s. Do these places still exist? Is it all 70 year olds? It would be fascinating if Men’s clubs made a comeback.

It depends on the part of the country, but I’d say most skew 55+ these days. I have a friend who joined the Masons because they hold poker tournaments. He says there are two bands of members, the old guys and the middle-aged guys. I’m a little surprised that your generation has not sought to bring back the men’s club. I know of one, by reputation and no first hand experience, that sits atop a strip club. It has a 4-star restaurant, first class bar and wine list, well trained table service and young ladies to spruce the place up,… Read more »

Could not agree more. I’ve been pining for years to open something like a Men’s club. Thinking of the British style – cushy chairs where you can think or read in peace, separate area for food and some entertainment. The howls from feminists would be icing on the cake, and I assume if it ever went mainstream they would quickly attempt to kill the effort.

Probably where this Deep State stuff is heading. The Republicans are proving me right…that they are all talk no action members of the Official Government Party. So, expect piddly little bills that accomplish or change nothing. It cannot be definitively stated that the “leaks” and anonymous sources are actually real. They can make up whatever they want, and pin it to “unnamed senior advisors”…who could be Obamaites, NeverTrumpers, or just fabricated out of whole cloth. Could even be a mole. Who knows. Like I wrote last week, this is a civil war that will be fought within the bureaucracy and… Read more »

“The Republicans are proving me right…that they are all talk no action members of the Official Government Party. So, expect piddly little bills that accomplish or change nothing.” There will be hell to pay if something is not done about Obamacare. Nearly everyone I know is counting on Trump to end the Obamacare misery. But Congress is the body that actually has to do something, and we’re not seeing much from them…. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * “the battle space is… Read more »

Everyone knows the media is the enemy. Even the Left because they choose “their” media over the “other” media which is contrary (more truthful) than theirs, not just the party line. But what I sense is the MSM being the enemy is a red herring when the real enemy is the GOPe. They are the real enemy. They have both halls of Congress today and yet they do nothing. We know Ryan, McConnell, McCain, Graham and other notables are RINOs who are fully invested in keeping the gravy train ‘a runn’in. They are the ones bad mouthing Trump in public… Read more »

Demographics is destiny. Reagan won in 1980 in no small part because the demographic wave caused by the 1965 immigration act had not sufficiently swept over the landscape by 1980, and the children of immigrants were not yet of voting age. Reagan won 489 electoral votes and carried both California and New York. No Republican will ever carry California and New York again. http://www.270towin.com/1980_Election/ By 1992 the white population of the US had dropped from 83% to 80% and the Hispanic population had increased from 6% to 9%. While this doesn’t sound terribly significant, the aggregate data masks the fact… Read more »

Texas will be lost eventually also. My conservative Texan family members would never believe this if I told them, but it might happen in 10-20 years.

California MUST be purged. The problem is there are too many people who would not want it to happen, including Trump and mainstream conservatives who have no idea what is going on. The right needs to understand the importance of Calexit.

CA is a problem, I agree with you there James. But when it comes to Calexit, I disagree. The Left in CA must be purged. I was part of the 40% that had no voice in that Democrat controlled disaster. I left. But I do not think it is right that “those Lefties” should claim that bit of “Heaven on Earth” as their land! Just what the hell did they do to build it into what it is today? If anything they have taken a great thing and are destroying it bit by bit with stupid policies. I would have… Read more »

Alt-Right is secession from the tyranny of normy and counter right thinking. Thats why it is such a danger to the status quo. It’s radical change from normative thinking. Secession, Alt-Right, is like the primal freedoms of Texit secession, (why don’t I have the right to think secession? Who has the authority, legitimacy, over me and God to decide this?), Milo’s free speech, Anglo Saxon Men’s Christian faith and culture, the sanctity of ones property, bearing arms in defense of these articles of sovereignty, you have to fight to keep them, you have to fight to create a preference for… Read more »

” Lots of people attached themselves to conservatism, as writers, thinkers and commentators, simply because there was money in it. ” The most human thing in the world is for a lot of people to cash in or try to. The problem is the hypocrisy of pretending that its really about being a true believer. I get that a guy like Krauthammer went the way the wind was blowing to get his paycheck but he keeps acting like he’s being principled and really believes when the reality is that if there was a communist revolution, he’d just adjust his message… Read more »

Milo is easy to dismiss, that’s the cheap way out. It is harder and takes ones own personal courage to stop and listen with ones ears to his message. Milo whatever his faults, and nobody, none of us, is above or below Milo regarding our own faults, faces a number of obstacles, he is far more principled in his beliefs and has the courage of his convictions in an age where abhorrence to change from normative thinking and the status quo is feared by the majority. He is a rebel and a resistor with a message. Radical? Radicalism is a… Read more »

“And Brooklyn, you walked eyes wide shut right into that, and I bet you don’t realize it.” I’ve never really given Milo much thought at all; and I doubt that I’m the only one either. Outside of social media his rise and fall probably matters very little. I don’t deny that he has courage to put himself out there but he’s only popped up in my view of things from time to time usually doing something outrageous or making some spectacle of himself. He should definitely have the right to talk to his hearts content but I don’t think in… Read more »

Exactly my experience in the 80s with the Reagan years and what it was to be a proud member of the opposition to the Left thinking we were winning the Republic back. I cannot help but also relate this to the TEA Party in 2009-10. Initially, it was this explosive local uprising against the Kenyan lightbringer champion of the Left. So effective it was that the Cult saw the threat and attacked it relentlessly as racist and every other nasty label and lie that would stick. Then, sadly, it became a grift for every crank and charlatan to line their… Read more »

Part of the way to success may be in continuing to be too repulsive for anyone to think they can profit from it. I suggest people simply embrace characterizations like Nazi and fascist. No one’s going to make big money fundraising off of that.

Look at what people read and watch. It is all about the rebels defying authority (see Star Wars and Firefly). Trump and the Right are the rebels, we have a “bad boy” attraction for the young. Rotary and the Elks are done, probably the Masons are, too. The more the establishment pushes back, the more opportunity we have. Reagan seemed to accept the victories he had achieved, and then relaxed (perhaps the pre-dementia played a role). Trump strikes me as one who will forever “double down”, win or lose. He doesn’t know the meaning of backing off or letting something… Read more »

Us dirt people are kind of where the Anglo Saxons were at one point. The ones who had enough came over to the new world to get away from the tyrannical PTB. Now we are in the same kind of boat the Scotts Irish and others in that long slow diaspora where. Except this time there is no new world to sail for, or the frontier over the Alleghenies to boogy into. This time we only get to stand our ground. O’ll take all the help I can get. If Alt-right and MAGA is help, Brother I’m all for it.… Read more »

The fight is never over. The wolf is ALWAYS at the door. So we don’t have new lands to move to (I guess there could be if we really chose to go somewhere), but this is our home. The fact that you can see barbarians at the gate and fight, or you can’t because they are termites eating away at your foundation, means only one of two things: you either fumigate and clean house, or you tear down and rebuild. There is no backing down. Our “friendly” immigrants are the barbarians at the gate. We can fight them and we… Read more »

I’d only add, the real barbarians are dressed in Brooks Brothers suits and carry shivs for sticking between the ribs of the dirt people. Those other barbarians at the gates are vassals sent to do the dirty work of the Brooks Brother barbariens.

Your right. It is our home. It is the only home to have. None like it. Its us the only one we got. Warts and all. It’s a pretty good place. Worth fighting for. And it is ours to begin, those who think otherwise not withstanding. So how is it not better to make it greater. Those who don’t like that can, tough shit, they go to hell where they belong.

Nobody remembers the good old days when the Masons were the radical left conspiracy against the old order. Good times… Interesting comment, though, Dutch. We on the broadly defined right err when we ignore pop culture, and although it was always kind of leftist we have lost a lot of ground in the last 10 years alone. Lucas inserted some clumsy anti-Bush messages into Revenge of the Sith, tracking half-wit leftist memes of the day. My favourite was “Only a Sith deals in absolutes!”, mimicking the period meme about the terrible lack of relativism and subtlety on the right. He… Read more »

The fact is we need to copy their play book and begin taking over various institutions and groups for our benefit. We should be the ones joining the Masons and other fraternal orders to keep them out of the hands of the death cult.

Good advice! Yes, (((hustlers))) and CIA front men like Buckley took over the conservative movement. The Alt-right has prevented that so far by being a decentralized movement without leaders, although it does have self appointed spokesmen, whom we are free to ignore or disagree wi…The best thing going for us, however, is history. As crisis approaches, nationalism becomes much stronger, because more people are forced to confront the truth that globalism is simply robbery of the public by the billionaires and their helpers.

A more recent lesson exists from ’08. We got burned by the establishment republicans when baby bush went full tilt banana republic marxist with the banking and insurance takeover. Not a single mainline person or outlet disagreed with that policy.

Got that right Fred, full tilt banana republic. Classic. Only on a scale not possible without the strip mining of the intrinsically wealthy dirt people in human history. They just dressed it up as a pig with earrings and perfume. Dare anyone say it wasn’t by design.

Alt-right should probably be thinking how best to pick up the pieces in a post GOP country. I’m not talking about them being in the minority party. I mean there will not be a GOP as we’ve known it all of our lives. The voters have given them this one, last chance to do what they promised. And here we are, only one month into having control of the HOuse, Senate and white house and they have already broken their biggest and most repeated promise. Obamacare isn’t going anywhere. The story since November 8th went to “repeal” to “repeal and… Read more »

There never was any voting our way out of this. I do not say that in despair, a serious sin to commit, but as a testament to what our withdrawal of consent as dirt people for the sonofabitches has wrought through voting for Donald Trump. Sound like a contradiction in terms? TINVOWOOT. There is no voting our way out of this. We must become manifest as dirt people, manifest in our consent. In refusing to submit. It was “I Won’t!” in the form of a vote. Alt-Right is a manifest event, it is the human terrain on top. Just as… Read more »

When Brett Steven’s coined Alt-Right as a Zietgiest and not a movement per say, I think he was defining something the “Conservative” movement was vulnerable to. Where Alt-Right is a gestalt, and not, a political movement or group, and everything about those that can be highjacked and waylaid from other political elements and forces arrayed against it. To me, Alt-Right, that’s how I think of it, is not THE Alt-Right. In it’s pure form, it is organic, primal instead of a political movement. To say Alt-Right instead of The Alt-Right, defines it in simplest terms. You kind of can’t say… Read more »

Funny. Spencer claims to have coined the term alt-right. Paul Gottfried claims to have coined the term alternative right. Now we can add Brett Stevens. Conservatism in the Anglo-Saxon sense has always been defined as an attitude, a temperament or an outlook. The policies and politics that arise from it are temporary and situational. To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the… Read more »

Frankly, I have no idea who coined Alt-Right itself. It kind of doesn’t matter to me. Like in that beautiful prose you quote and point to, the catechisms and essence is the crux of it that what matters. It is one of those things that can really only be defined individually, there is no catchall analogy or axioms. I’m pretty sure Brett coined the zeitgeist analogy, about September last year on his Amerika blog. I thought it was a brilliant insight and made profound sense to me. In truth, till I read the Zietgiest thing, I was pretty confused by… Read more »

In Suicide of the West, James Burnham emphasizes better than any where I’ve read the essential difference between the unhinged, rigid ideology of the left vs the [too] adaptable political philosophy of conservatism.

“The Masons….That’s the sort of opportunity a young a vibrant Left would have infiltrated and re-purposed.” I’ve been a Mason for many years and can confirm that this in fact did happen in many jurisdictions. Lodges are becoming a mix of shallow thinkers advocating the latest in humanism, globalism, and moral relativism. We’ve seen a big change in this regard in the last 7-10 years. To see some examples, browse the Freemasonry sub on Reddit and do a web search for the controversies in state-level Grand Lodges regarding gay marriage, particularly Arkansas. Conservative members are pushed out of line or… Read more »

It was mourning in America, so Krauthammer moved to the write-wing.Having been sensitized to Mondale from both the Carter years, and Mondale’s Minnesota experience, I’ve never understood his attraction. Being quadriplegic does not guarantee any special fount of insight or wisdom, and it militates against a wide range of human experiences. As for Milo, I’ve always thought he was trouble.And exactly what is dangerous about the Libertarian flirtation. I’ve always known that Gays are attention sponges. Originally, before the APA sold out behavioral scientists knew and warned that homosexuality, if not itself a serious mental disorder, was closely associated with… Read more »

This post and the comments bring me back to old, old thought that the battle will never end, and the life, the joy, are to participate, always with no surrender.

Sometimes we will be ascendant, sometimes the foul leftist totalitarians, but the ascendancy will only be temporary.

Take courage my friends, if we hold them back from enslaving or killing us, our families or our friends, even for a few short years, we have done our job. After that, our children will have to step up to the bar and pay the tab.

It seems to me like Milo was pointing out an obvious truth: gay men are attracted to young guys, even real young guys. I think a great many of the gays are similar, that is my experience from hitchhiking around as a teenager in the 70s. I met a lot of gays, some of them very pushy when they had you alone. Teenagers are just cuter, more vulnerable, easier to mislead into perverse lifestyles, more naive and less cautious in every way. Young guyls are MUCH less careful than young girls. I narrowly avoided being raped on several occasions, due… Read more »

A few themes pop out. But first, this- the battle was lost on many levels the day America [and Canada] outsourced child-rearing to PBS and Children’s Television Workshop. As far as I remember, even the Sesame Street I watched in 1970s Canada was full on left wing propaganda- life as an idealized multiethnic Brooklynish urban street neighbourhood, diverse performers, constant shots of diverse kids playing together to happy clappy music, constant if fairly subtle driving home of the messages that it’s both good to be an outsider and mandatory for society to include outsiders, if selectively. And on and on.… Read more »

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”